Interviews
I feel there’s nothing to do for me but to constantly make and create more spaces. It is like drilling through existing hard shelled spaces, cemented in their ways.
READTo Follow a Ball of Yarn: A Conversation With Shubhangi Singh
On gendered forms of labor, collective struggles, domestic and public spaces in relation to the body.
I don’t believe in inspiration. I go to the studio all the time and I might sit there and read my phone if I don’t do anything, but I need to get there. Mostly even if you think nothing will happen there, you might just catch the most essential small idea that you start to develop.
READA Long Line of Characters: Getting to Know the Life and Work of Kirsti Tuokko
Kirsti Tuokko on her life as a painter and person, navigating gender roles, prescribed pathways, uncertainty, pleasure, and guilt.
I guess this need for touch is so present now, It’s something I noticed not only in my work but all around. And when I’m producing [new work] I wanted to give this feeling of tangible fingers or tongues, this feeling of touch.
READFinding Forms to Recognise Warmth: A Conversation With Bogna Luiza Wisniewska
Conversational pathway created by Katie Lenanton and Bogna Luiza Wisniewska through critical distance and intimacy with image-prompts.
I had just visited Noora’s latest exhibition Still Struggling at The Platform Gallery. Noora’s art probes the absurdities of everyday life: plain for everyone to see, but easy to miss. It also immerses, engulfs. It addresses the usually overlooked, but unavoidable, vital.
READMovement and Resistance: An Interview With Noora Geagea
On daily routine, power dynamics, struggles, resistance, attitudes, and structures.
As soon as I sit in the front seat of the car the size of a herring tin, I understand where the opulent descriptions of Hertta are coming from. Her joy, warmth, and charisma tangle around me and fill the insides of the tiny Fiat.
READMixing Everything With Everything in Everything — an Interview With Hertta Kiiski
On viewing care work as an expertise and embracing it as a significant part of artistic practice.
I leave my bike on the side of the market square next to the pier where the ferry to Suomenlinna island goes. I look around, trying to spot Corinna; we have never met before. My first impressions of her base on our exchange of emails, a delicate mind-map she shared with me, and on what I know of her work. Corinna arrives with a light pushchair and a lively child in a baby carrier against her chest. They have come to Helsinki before heading to the archipelago, and we have decided to take a walk in Suomenlinna. It would be easier to talk while moving since the young, involuntary participant might get restless with no action around.
READOn Soft Alphabets and the Hues of an Inside: An Interview With Corinna Helenelund
On the role of language and textuality, colors, pregnancy, and parenting in Helenelund’s work.
Craftsmanship that leaves a polished finishing and evocative historical notions hidden underneath the fine details. Man Yau’s work with ceramic installations arrests the viewer, while encouraging to revisit and contemplate the uncanny contemporaneity that the artworks embody. In this interview, we discuss artistic processes, practices and labour as well as the intertwining of the personal and the thematic in Yau’s two exhibitions from the spring 2021: M.Y. Chinoiserie at Kuvan Kevät, Exhibition Laboratory, and Dried flowers last forever at Boy Konsthall.
READOn “The Feeling of Being on Display and Under Pressure” — a Conversation With Man Yau
On artistic processes, practices and labour as well as the intertwining of the personal and the thematic in Man Yau’s work.
I still remember the first time I saw Kihwa-Endale artwork in her studio. She was painting on transparent surfaces and mirrors. The paintings were getting alive, reflecting the light, the space around it and showing you your own reflection. Kihwa-Endale explained that the artworks were meant to portray multiple realities coexisting and play with the viewer.
READContinuance between Art, Art-Space and Audience: conversation with Kihwa-Endale
Ubuntu Film Club (Alice Mutoni, Rewina Teklai, Fiona Musanga) in conversation with Good Hair Day (Saida Mäki-Penttilä, Paloma Sandberg, Akunna Onwen) about why community-based organisations are needed?
READWhy Are Community-Based Organisations Needed?
Ubuntu Film Club in conversation with Good Hair Day.
It’s easy to remember when I met Eleni Tsitsirikou. It was on the day of my arrival from Berlin to Helsinki for my curatorial residency at HIAP. On Wednesday, 1 November 2017, I felt nervous looking for the entrance of Kaapeli, the Cable Factory. But there was Eleni waiting for me with a welcoming smile. Since then, throughout the residency, she was the person that I could turn to, making me feel at home. If there is a heart to an organisation, it would be Eleni for HIAP.
READMoment of Welcoming: Conversation With Eleni Tsitsirikou
Has there been a change in how art residencies are perceived? A conversation with HIAP’s residency manager.
The way I learned to connect with Kaffeochbulla was mainly through art and usually in a very straightforward manner. They would hand me zines, prints, stickers, earrings or clothes upon meeting, and always ask what I’ve been doing or experimenting with. It has always felt vulnerable in a nice way and that these exchanges of art, thoughts and treasures weave little webs of support and excitement for one another.
READMagic, Intergenerational Trauma & Snail Shells: Conversation With KaffeochBulla
On creating art in a culture where vulnerability is discouraged, breaking intergenerational curses, and the importance of community.